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The Defense of Varlock Keep
Introduction The Space Marines under the command of Gabriel Angelos come to the aid of House Varlock which is under siege by the Orks. Effectively a tutorial mission, even on the Hard difficulty this should not be an extreme challenge if you're careful. Note that you do not yet have Doctrines in this mission nor a choice of Elites. The primary goal is this: get Gabriel to the end of the map while keeping alive as many of the forces he collects along the way as possible, for a final climactic battle. You will have no constant income from Points of Contention so the maximum amount of troops you can collect by the end of the mission is most definitely finite, and Gabriel cannot survive the final battle on his own. Walkthrough # You start with control of only Gabriel. A group of computer-controlled Space Marine troops are fighting on your side against an onslaught of light Ork infantry, mainly Boyz. Just charge in and attack, using Gabriel's abilities when they are unlocked. The forces are light enough that you shouldn't take much damage at all. # When the initial raiding parties are defeated you will have to start moving northwest along the map path, occasionally using God-Splitter to jump up to higher sections. You quickly gain access to 2 Dawn of War III/Scout Squads and a Dawn of War III/Tactical Marine Squad via drop pod while moving along a narrow pathway. Do everything you can to keep them alive as you progress; you will need all the forces you can get at the end of the mission. Light forces will attack you as you go, keep Gabriel in front disrupting them to protect your infantry as much as possible. # The narrow path will come to a larger clearing with a bigger group of Orks, including a Deffgun Loota squad that can cause serious problems. 2 Scout Sniper squads will be dropped; IMMEDIATELY back them off towards the rest of your forces so they won't die, you'll need them later. Don't send Gabriel too far forward either, the damage against him can really start building up and you will only encounter a limited number of healing drop items. Don't worry too much about keeping your current infantry alive, you'll have to leave all of them behind soon so use them to minimize the damage that Gabriel sustains during this fight. Once the Orks are fully cleared from this area, collect healing drops for Gabriel to get him up to full health if possible, then move on. # After a short distance the pathway will be partially damaged by falling debris, and you'll need to use God-Splitter to get Gabriel across, leaving all your current infantry behind. You will move forward into another larger section with a sunken floor segment; here a Dawn of War III/Dreadnought and some infantry will be desperately fighting against a rather large Ork force, and you get a drop pod with an Dawn of War III/Assault Marine Squad. Be very careful where you deploy the Assault Marines, you definitely want them alive for later and make sure to save the Dreadnought. # Once you have defeated the ork forces, you gain control of the Dreadnought and two Tactical Marine squads, and a Barracks with a limited amount of Requisition to spend. KEY TIP: Given the nature of the final battle, your best option is to buy one Scout Squad and all of the rest Scout Snipers. Do this and switch the Scout squad to Hold Fire mode, then carefully move on having the Scout squad search ahead for you first. # As you move further along the map you will face increased Ork infantry forces. You need to keep as much of your infantry alive as possible; send the cloaked Scout squad ahead first to spot them, then lure the enemy forces into a wall of sniper fire with Gabriel in the front disrupting them. # The final stage is "Secure the Sanctuary", which is a sunken wide area that you will approach from the northeast down multiple sets of stairs. Once you move forward enough, a very large enemy force of Orks consisting of a lot of infantry and one Deff Dread will arrive. This is the final battle. On the hardest difficulty setting, the ideal setup if you have followed the above steps is the following: -Move your Snipers and Tactical Marines just onto the first set of stairs, and have Gabriel, the Dreadnought and any surviving Assault Marines in front of them. Put the Scout squad much further forward on Hold Fire mode; the enemy forces in the final battle will not have any Detectors so they will be safe, and will provide critical firing sight for the snipers. -The above formation will force the enemy to bottleneck while going up the first level of side stairs. The sniper fire will heavily thin out most of them before they get to your front melee fighters; only the eventual Deff Dread will rather easily get up there which can then be taken on by Gabriel and the Dreadnought. -Moving the Scout squad forward will trigger the final fight. Just hold your forces on the stairs and have your snipers kill everything they can as they approach your melee line. Following this plus constant disruption via Gabriel, you should win. Category:Dawn of War III Campaign